The Underside

by H. R. F. Keating

  Mary pushed at the door in front of her and it gave way with a slow creak. She took his hand then and, though they had seen not a soul for the past five minutes and more, she whispered.

  ‘This is the house where I was born, lily gennelman. Come in along o’ me. Come in.’

  He followed her in blindly. In the pitch dark he could smell cold and rot and perhaps the high stink of rats’ droppings. But he could also smell in chance wafts the big bronze body ahead of him, the musky odour that he remembered.

  He stumbled up a few stone steps, feeling the soft and tackily clinging contact of spiders’ webs thick against his face. They went through a doorless doorway. And then she came to a halt in front of him.

  ‘Wait a minute, gennelman,’ she said. ‘Wait a minute an’ yo’ll see where yo are. There’s a window here and the light’ll come through in jus’ a minute.’

  He waited in the darkness, leaning lightly against her, feeling the strong warmth of her body, of her shoulder and of her wide hips. And before long he was able to make out the paler rectangle of the window.

  He took a step towards it.

  ‘Careful where yo go, gennelman,’ Mary said. ‘There’s a hole there, a hole where we used to shit into the creek.’

  He stopped and looked downwards and in a moment he was able to make out a lighter circle in the darkness at his feet. And then through it he saw a flickering dim bluish light coming and going. He must be seeing, he thought, the phosphorescent remains of rotting fish or will-o’-the-wisp gas rising from the decaying matter in the creek.

  But Mary had stepped up beside him. She turned him towards her and took him in her capacious arms. He felt her body braced against his. He felt the soft warmth of her great breasts, the hardness of her round stomach and a harder hardness below that, thrusting at him.

  He reached forward and pulled up the skirt of that garish green dress till he felt the crisp layer of mud round the hem. And then his hands fell to their work.

  It was sweet as she had promised. It was sweeter than anything that had ever been. It was sweeter for the sharp whiffs of decay that floated up from the black creek underneath. It was sweeter for the filth that lay sticky to the touch on the boards under them as they rolled and wrestled, kissed and caressed. It was sweeter for the rats that ran to and fro and squeaked as if the heady scent of wildness responding to wildness had infected them too.

  It was the promise amply redeemed. And in it the last hints of dissatisfaction in response to the question he had put so many times in so many different circumstances paled away at last. This was the end. The answer, the ultimate answer.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  But they did not lie, as he had thought they would, all night on the slime-black boards of the house where Mary had been born. He had fallen into a doze of exhaustion and then the cold had woken him and, shivering and taking in at every breath the steady stench of the foul creek below, he had thought that he must have some spirits or he would contract a disease that might be the end of him. So they had got up and stumbled through the cobwebby darkness of the ruinous house and out into the mean little forsaken street. At the Globe and Pigeons they had taken each of them two threepennyworths of poor rum, swallowing them neat.

  ‘Will yo come back to the house, gennelman?’ Mary asked.

  ‘I’ll come back to you. But not tonight now. I’ve a little business to transact tomorrow. But when it’s done I’ll come back. I’ll come and I’ll stay. With you. Perhaps with others. But here I’ll spend my life.’

  Mary looked at him with a slow smile on her broad bronze face. And he saw that she knew that ‘here’ did not mean Rotherhithe or the rotting remains of the house where she had been born. She knew, without telling, that ‘here’ was the underside, that boundaryless land that lay all about them and would lie all about them both so long as they lived. So the rendezvous they made for this particular place at six o’clock next day, New Year’s Day, was a rendezvous only in the most practical terms. Because already Godfrey had taken up residence. Already he had entered upon his kingdom. The doors of that other upper world had clanged closed behind him.

  The doors had closed behind him. But, he found, there was still a little to be done on the far side of them. It would be necessary to slip through a wicket-gate. There were his financial transactions to be completed. There were perhaps some clothes and other things to be got from home. And, he realised as his cab came carefully over the slushy roadway into Red Lion Square and he looked at his watch, there was his midnight appointment with Elizabeth to be kept.

  He could have avoided the mockery, have waited outside till the clocks had struck the hour and the bells had begun to ring. But she would stay up and wait for him and there would be explanations to undergo. It was best to go through with it. There should be time still to creep into the house and if possible get upstairs to his dressing-room and change from his filthied clothes into ones that would excite no remark. Then to that ashy toast to a year of half a day.

  He told the cab-driver to set him down on the far side of the square so that the too-near clop of hooves would not draw attention to his arrival. Then he walked quietly across the centre of the square under the tall dripping planes, crept up the house steps, slid his latch-key into the lock with the greatest caution and opened the door just an inch or so. The hall was empty, standing all in quiet order. He went in on tip-toe. Then he saw, with a spurt of quite unjustified anger, that the door to the drawing-room was open by just a crack and that there was a light coming from behind it.

  For a little he stood on the thick doormat hesitating. It would be Elizabeth in there. Doubtless the maids had been sent to bed. Elizabeth, a believer in plenty of health-giving sleep, never kept them up unnecessarily late. So would she see him if he tried to creep past? Or should he go in and face her in clothes that plainly stank of the filth he had been rolling in? That would certainly lead to requests for explanation. Elizabeth was constitutionally incapable of not noticing dirt. But if he set off to get upstairs and was seen? The consequences then would be all those recriminations he was seeking to avoid.

  He decided to risk going straight up. He set out across the polish-glistening rug-spread floor. There came not the faintest sound of any movement from the drawing-room. No doubt Elizabeth was sitting quietly by the fire, a fat Blue Book on her reading-stand. He reached the stairs and went up them as fast as he dared without making any creaks. Only, just at the turn, did it seem to him that the crack of light below looked less bright than it had done, as if perhaps the door had been opened and then pushed to again. But there was no time to stop and make sure. He whisked into the dressing-room, trusting that his half-seen glimpse had been a mere trick of the light.

  It did not take him very long to bundle most of his clothes out of sight, find fresh ones and put them on. Then he pomaded his hair liberally in the hope that the scent would cover up any remaining odours from Rotherhithe and crept quickly down the stairs again, holding hat and surtout.

  The crack at the edge of the drawing-room door looked not a whit narrower than before. He slipped across to the house-door, opened it and then closed it again with something of a bang.

  ‘Halloa, my dear,’ he called out. ‘Not yet midnight.’

  Elizabeth appeared at the drawing-room door.

  ‘My darling,’ she said. ‘No, it wants five minutes to the hour.’

  She had an air of excitement about her. Almost a child’s excitement, he thought. It would have been cruel to have deprived her of the innocent pleasure she had been looking forward to, even though a greater cruelty was to come.

  He finished hanging up the hat and surtout he had clandestinely brought down and then went to go into the drawing-room.

  ‘No, my darling,’ Elizabeth said. ‘I have had a fire lit upstairs and the wine put out beside it.’

  Standing to let her precede him up the stairs, he felt somewhat disconcerted. A fire in the bedroom. They never had one except in case of illness. It was a luxu
ry Elizabeth strongly disapproved of, preferring plenty of fresh air. But perhaps the cold of the day had made her for once change her mind, though in other wintry spells she had never done so.

  He followed her up.

  In the bedroom there was no other light but that of the fire, burning clearly and briskly. Shadows were leaping over the walls, altogether changing the aspect of the room. No longer was its mood set by the pattern of small flowers on the white of the walls, which he had been accustomed to think of as bright Alpine sprigs taking him back to the days of their Swiss honeymoon. Instead the room had become a half-and-half place, half its old open self, half newly mysterious. And was there not something else, beside the wine and glasses on the little table by the fire, that was different? Yes, the bed. The bedclothes had been turned down much further than usual. Perhaps with the fire Edith, whose duty it was to prepare the bed at night, had departed from her usual practice. But it was odd. And it added to the uneasiness he felt. Or was that his conscience, pricking him for the deceit he was about to play?

  And almost at once the deceit had to be played. From outside in the cold still air came the sound of the church clocks beating out the first of the twelve strokes of midnight. It was the end of the old year. It was the start of the new.

  Elizabeth had poured the wine while he had been standing musing. They took their glasses. They lifted them. They drank.

  ‘Happy New Year,’ he said. And the words choked him a little.

  ‘Happy New Year, my darling,’ said Elizabeth.

  And her words seemed to carry more meaning, and even a more immediate meaning, than they might have done.

  She drank down the rest of her wine almost at a single swallow. And again he experienced a slight shock of surprise. Elizabeth, who would take wine only occasionally and then make a single glass last the whole of a dinner hour, to have tossed this glass down now? Yes, that was what she had done. Tossed it down.

  ‘My dear, more wine?’ he asked, as the bells outside began their cheerful ringing.

  ‘No, my darling, my darling dear. I’ve had all the wine I need.’

  And at once she moved to her dressing-table and began to take off her clothes. And another oddity. She, who was always so careful of her things, folding them neatly and putting them precisely down, now she was dropping them on to the chair so hastily that they were in danger of sliding to the floor. And, more, she had made no move to get her warm nightdress but one by one was taking each garment off so that before long she would be naked. Dress, stays, cambric petticoat, flannel petticoat, stockings, drawers, chemise, each in turn dropped hastily on to the chair. In summer occasionally she would undress completely and not scruple to stand naked before him. But in winter mere comfort dictated otherwise. Of course, tonight there was the fire, but …

  Then he saw it. In summer when she undressed completely it was always as a preliminary to making love.

  So she had not acquiesced, as he had come to think she had, at his own failure to make advances to her. Instead, plainly, she had planned this play-acting scene. This was why he had been made, with such insistence, to promise to return home at a reasonable hour. He had often in the last weeks taken the precaution of coming back very late precisely so as to evade the possibility he wanted so strongly to avoid. But now he had been tricked. And this too was the reason for the fire. And the too-deeply-turned-down bedclothes. She had decided, in that direct sea-cutting way of hers that had once so enchanted him, that she was going to seduce him. And she had bided her time and now was attacking him boldly as once she had attacked the Bishop of Stanmore.

  She was loosening her dark hair now to the all-around-them chiming of the bells outside. The firelight was leaping on the white skin of her body, playing over the deep pink of the marks her stays had left.

  What was he to do? Was he to resist her? Was he to succumb to her perhaps? It would be a deception to let her think she had brought him back to her again. But would it be so much worse a deception than the deception he was already practising, the deception that would be put finally into effect next day? No. But it would be, he felt with total conviction, a gross deception practised against his new faith. It would be, on the very day that he had declared that the gates had clanged shut, a traitorous act to link himself with one who was surely the very opposite of the dwellers in his new country.

  He would not do it.

  But Elizabeth was coming towards him, holding out her arms.

  ‘My dear,’ he stammered out to her. ‘My dear, I am sorry. But I cannot— An intense headache. I don’t know what, but, Elizabeth, I’m sorry, I cannot.’

  He had hoped that she would be checked by this. But if she were not to be, then he had expected her to plead with him. What she did do, however, took him altogether by surprise.

  She darted close to him and with the firelight dancing on her nakedness and smiling, smiling, he would have thought of anyone else, lasciviously, she began trying to take off his clothes.

  ‘My dear, no. No, dearest.’

  ‘Let me see you, Godfrey.’

  She was crooning at him, crooning as the churchbells rang out. Yes, she was behaving as whores had behaved with him, some of the whores he had gone to in the days between the failure of the Venus Verticordia and the visit to the Derby. They had not been those plunged in the underside but rather the honest journeymen of their trade, giving the customer what they supposed he wanted. They had behaved in almost exactly the way Elizabeth was behaving now.

  She had stepped back from him and was flaunting her body at him. They too had flaunted their bodies. As they had done, she was swaying towards him and away, now with out-thrust breasts, now with buttocks, now with crisp curly-haired motte.

  It had been in those terms that he had thought of such whores. But Elizabeth. Elizabeth. Elizabeth of the love-making that, however ardent, had been always flower-pure. Elizabeth, darting now to the bed and flinging back the covers she had already half stripped off. Elizabeth turning and wantonly challenging him, challenging him to sexual encounter with all the directness with which she would challenge some dirt-grimed wife at Perkins Rents to clean her squalid home. It was unbelievable.

  It was wrong.

  In an instant, the thought clarifying itself in his mind, he had his dilemma solved for him. He could no more bring himself to make love to this creature than he could have made love to an iron machine.

  ‘No, Elizabeth, no,’ he cried. ‘This must not be.’

  And it checked her. Standing beside the broad-spread bed that she had intended should be the field of their encounter, he saw her quail once and shrink.

  ‘My dear,’ he said, less stridently. ‘This cannot be. My dear, I am going to lie down to sleep, and I advise you to collect yourself and then do the same.’

  He sought out his nightshirt from where Elizabeth had tossed it aside, pulled off his top clothes and slipped its voluminous folds over his head. Then, with almost surreptitious haste, he took off the rest of his clothes, buttoned the nightshirt high to the neck, hauled back the covers over the bed and slipped between the sheets. He turned his face to the wall and shut his eyes.

  He did not of course sleep. Too much had happened, too much that was too unexpected, too much that ought to be thought about and would not let itself be thought about. So he lay there, in the slightly crouching back-turned attitude in which he had first placed himself. He lay stiffly and the New Year peal rang out its course.

  After a long while he heard her move. There had been little sound in the room now the bells had stopped, only the tiny ticking of his watch and the occasional soft settling of the fire in the grate, and his ears were attuned for the least noise. She moved. He heard her walk across the room. There was a minute sigh and the sound of fine material being whisked through the air and against a body. She in her turn was putting on her nightdress. Then he heard her steps again, for all that the carpet was thick. And then, as he had expected, there was the movement of the mattress as she rested for a momen
t on the edge of the bed. And then she swung herself up and pulled the blankets over herself.

  And then she was lying beside him, as far away as she could get, and—it was easy to tell by the complete lack of sound—she was as rigid as if she was the statue of an armoured and stiff-legged knight carved on a tomb. He opened his eyes. The fire had almost died to nothing.

  Perhaps half an hour passed. He once or twice wondered whether he should try to make himself sleep. But he knew that he would be unable to do so. For a little he sorted out the mere mechanical events that must have led up to the situation. How, undoubtedly, Arthur Balneal had after all seen him in St Giles that night he had come back enraged and disappointed from Rotherhithe. He must have been seen going into the house at the far end of the alley and the gust of laughter he had heard had been because of that. Balneal must have waited too to see him come out and have noted that he was in the company of the fly-paper man. And he would not have found it hard to learn of that individual’s pandering activities and the sort of women he led his customers to. In what manner Balneal had managed to tell Elizabeth of it all defied conjecture, what ‘soiled doves’ had been referred to and what ‘unspeakable practices’. But to tell her he had evidently conceived it his duty. And tell her he had. And Elizabeth? For once she must have decided not to bring things immediately out into the open. Most probably Balneal had come to see her when he himself had been at Hindhead. So she would have had time to think and think it all over. No wonder she had seemed withdrawn when he had come back from Surrey and no wonder she had checked at Balneal’s name this morning. And then at some time she must have conceived this notion that she would have to be to him what she thought the women he frequented must be, the women she knew he had in those days before the Derby been drawn to in preference to herself.

  So had she studied whoring? With all the concentration she brought to a Blue Book? In some way or other she might well have done. A person of resolution, and no one had more of that than Elizabeth, could have got hold of books, have sent some bleary messenger from Perkins Rents to Holywell Street, to the erotic booksellers, and have gained thus some book-learned idea of the whore’s mode of business. And then she would have laid her plans for New Year’s Eve and sprung her pathetic, her appalling trap.